More about the Esperanto
Day twenty-two Question -- The strategy of constructing a universal language Answer -- Up to this point, I have mainly talked about PreBabel. As this is a conlanger site, I would like to talk about the conlang (constructed language) in general now. What is a conlang ? Perhaps, you all know this better than I do. Yet, what is the "fate" for a (or any) conlang? It is destined to be one of the two outcomes. 1. A playful game, among some conlangers. 2. A universal language. After 140 years of great efforts from many great people, Esperanto tried to claim to be a universal language, but it is more of a claim than a reality. Seemingly, Esperanto has the beef to be a useful communicative language. Yet, it failed in China, again in Iran. That is, its fate is hanging on the skin of other people's tooth, depending on other's mercy. However a great wonder that Esperanto has done, it did not truly break out the cocoon of a playful language. Why? There are two "almost" un-surmountable obstacles for any conlang. US1 -- learning two instead of one US2 -- lacking of meaningful sizable speaking community Then, is there any chance for a conlang to overcome these two mountains. Of course, there is an 100% chance. I have outlined a theoretical framework about the existence of a universal language. I also gave out a detailed description of an implementation mechanism for such a universal language. Now, I am going to show the strategy of how to overcome these two mountains. The US1 can be easily resolved with a "Pin-Ying" strategy. Before 1950s, for five thousand years, not a single Chinese ever heard about Pin-Ying. It takes about 10 to 20 hours for a new student to learn Pin-Ying. Today, not many persons (native Chinese or foreigner) think about that learning Pin-Ying is an additional thing to learning Chinese but see it as a pre-requisite before learning Chinese. The US2 can also be easily overcome. We just need simply to bring all natural languages (at least, the Big five or six) to their knees. Yes, to their knees, but not to kill them nor to replace them, as they are already immortals and cannot be killed nor replaced. How? Simply, to posses them, constructing a dialect for each one of them and following each forever. Both strategies can be implemented with a single approach, the PreBabel pathway. In my discussion on the spider web, I pointed out that the final shape of a spider web is defined by three anchoring threads. In the same way, constructing a language web needs also three threads. Th1. A set of vocabulary. Th2. A set of sentence formation rules (the grammar) Th3. A set of phonemes. In order to catch all natural languages into this web, I have kept Th2 very flexible and Th3 completely open, although I do have strong preferences for both of them. Yet, I need to see the direction of the wind before anchoring them. As a conlang, Esperanto could be a good candidate to fit the both bills of Th2 and Th3. Can we truly possess a natural language? The answer is a big YES. Almost every natural language (including the aboriginal one) is a result of collective intelligence of a group of people. That is, it is the result of an evolution process. So, its body contains two souls. So1. a group of people with shared history So2. arbitrary and chaotic, as the direct consequences of two diverging "forces", many people and an evolution process. The So2 is the weak point, the opening for us to possess it. I have discussed a "shadow theorem"; that for every chaotic system, it is a shadow of an ordered system. We can construct that ordered system to possess it. When a language is possessed, it becomes a much easier language to learn. The US1 and US2 are resolved by this single possessing process. In my paper, "The new Paradigm of Linguistics" http://www.chinese-word-roots.org/nparadi.htm states, "the axiomatized language is much, much easier to learn than the chaotic ones." Yet, seemingly, only constructed language can be 100% axiomatized as the natural language is always under a great diverging force, the evolution. Although there are truly signs of evolutionary marks and scars, the Chinese written system is, in fact, an 100% axiomatized set. There are many more evidences to show that it is really a constructed language by a very small group of people, perhaps a ruling clan. Yet, not a single Chinese person today truly know that its own written language is an 100% axiomatized system. However, if we conlangers do not study the only 100% axiomatized language in the real natural language world, we cannot truly know how to move a conlang from a playful game to be a universal language. Signature -- PreBabel is the true universal language, it is available at http://www.prebabel.info